This past year, over 1.6 million farm animals were reported killed in barn fires across the United States, making 2020 the deadliest year since AWI began tracking these incidents through media reports.
More than 150,000 farm animals perished in potentially preventable barn fires in the United States in 2018, an Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) analysis of media reports to date has found.
Today, the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) released a first-of-its-kind report highlighting the more than 2.7 million US farm animals who perished in potentially preventable barn fires from 2013 to 2017. The report, issued in advance of National Fire Prevention Week (Oct. 7-13), offers recommendations for barn fire prevention and improved fire safety to better protect farm animals.
Bats live on every continent except Antarctica and serve extremely important ecological roles as pollinators, seed dispersers and consumers of vast quantities of insects. Although some societies value these useful animals, many persecute bats based on irrational prejudice and fears of rabies.
At least 47 Canada lynx have been illegally trapped in Maine over the past decade and despite a designation as threatened on the federal endangered species list, a court has declined to accord lynx adequate protection from illegal trapping under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
In the Summer 2012 AWI Quarterly, we reported that more than 10,000 animals each year are shot, stabbed, mutilated, and killed in military training exercises.
A butterfly’s life is fragile at the best of times. But these are hardly the best of times. Indeed, all the indicators and experts agree: The butterflies are now enduring very serious challenges. Extinction is overtaking them in the distant forests of Sri Lanka and Papua New Guinea, as well as in the British countryside, the Mexican hill country, the Northern Great Plains, southern Florida, and our own backyards.
“Operation Something Bruin,” a four-year, multi-agency sting operation involving state officials from Georgia and North Carolina, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, and National Park Service, has resulted in the arrest of 80 people charged with some 980 wildlife violations in connection with bear poaching in the region.
Keggie Carew’s background is not in science (her career started in contemporary art), and it shows. Her book, Beastly: The 40,000-Year Story of Animals and Us, is not the first book to consider the combined history of humans and nonhuman animals, but it takes a unique approach to the tale.
There I stood upon a steep hillside in the lush and wild heart of Idaho, using all fours to steady myself, though not nearly as deftly as my canine co-worker, Wicket.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) applauds U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-WA) for introducing legislation yesterday that would invest in effective, nonlethal solutions to reduce property damage caused by beavers.
Part narrative, part reference source, Leila Philip’s Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America provides incredible information about beavers—from their physiology and behaviors to their entwined history with humankind in the United States and the threats they now face.
The importance of providing woodchips for hygienic purposes has been established by Chamove et al (1982), and the provisioning of bedding materials is encouraged for environmental enrichment by Bayne (1989). At the Primate Foundation of Arizona (PFA), we provide bedding materials along with woodchips for these reasons and to encourage natural wild chimpanzee activities, such as foraging, nesting, and tool use.
On the first day of summer 2013, agriculture officials confirmed that 50,000 bees—likely representing more than 300 colonies—discovered dead in a shopping mall parking lot in Wilsonville, Oregon, were done in by a neonicotinoid pesticide sprayed on nearby trees.
Every five years or so, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association releases a National Beef Quality Audit, conducted through the beef checkoff program (checkoff programs collect money from producers to fund promotional campaigns and research).
Who better to teach us about the current extinction crisis than three of the world’s top ecologists? The authors of Before They Vanish: Saving Nature’s Populations—and Ourselves, Drs. Paul Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo, have written some of the most important scientific papers on the subject.
Curiosity—the drive to gather information—is considered a fundamental motivation throughout the animal kingdom. As such, providing opportunities to satisfy that curiosity may be essential for animals to have good welfare in captivity. Fish are held in captivity at some of the highest numbers of any taxa, but their curiosity is rarely studied or accommodated. It is estimated that upwards of 1 million individuals of the Cyprinidae family, which includes carp and true minnows, are used annually in research on human development and physiology. Yet, housing plans for laboratory fishes have been modeled from the aquaculture industry, prioritizing production and functionality over welfare, resulting in barren tanks and minimal cognitive stimulation for the animals residing in them.
A captive group of white-faced capuchins, Cebus capucinus, was presented with four deep litters in simultaneous choice (or preference) tests. A floor covering of ground corn cob, woodchips, wood wool or peat was presented once in each quarter of the group's indoor floor-area for 14 consecutive days, and the layout of the litters was rotated after each such period. The monkeys were observed on 10 days in each period to determine the occurrence of locomotion, foraging, play, and social contact on each of the litters.
Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, by Michelle Nijhuis, is a cross between a Ken Burns–style historical documentary and the 2016 film Hidden Figures, bringing to life the history of key players who helped promote wildlife and wildlands conservation. While Nijhuis highlights the restoration of the American plains bison, bald eagle, and whooping crane, it is the stories about the conservation champions featured in the book that make it a compelling read.
For the past decade and more, a single capture team in the remote east of Russia, on the southern shores of the Sea of Okhotsk, has been removing an average of 20 live beluga whales a year from the summer feeding population in Sakhalinsky Bay.
On June 5, a 3-week-old female beluga at Georgia Aquarium died. Just over a month later, another 3-week-old female beluga—born prematurely—died at SeaWorld San Antonio. The Georgia Aquarium birth had been hailed as a milestone, “the first viable calf to be born from parents who were born in human care.”
Little White and Little Grey, two young belugas originally captured from Russia’s Okhotsk Sea and held in a dolphinarium in Shanghai, China, for a decade, are now the first residents in the world’s first cetacean seaside sanctuary, in Vestmannaeyj
